What are the implications of the current bottom-up network calculation?

[MartLubben]

At this moment the network calculation is done in five steps:

1. Merit order calculation on total supply and demand per hour, including all flex options.
2. LV net hourly sum supply and demand, residual load moves to the MV net.
3. MV net hourly sum supply and demand, residual load moves to the HV net.
4. HV net hourly sum supply and demand.
5. The resulting peaks are compared to the current capacity and new infrastructure is built.

This calculation is illustrated for wind offshore power stored in household batteries:

The demand moves from LV to MV to HV.

The question @ChaelKruip and I have are:

• Does wind offshore stored in batteries create a demand or a supply peak in the real world grids? Especially for the MV net it matters a lot where demand and supply meet. Does it show a demand peak or a supply peak on the MV net?

Changing bottom-up to top-down is not a solution: If the conclusion is that the supply peak moves across the nets, then doing the calculation top-down is not a solution. If in a top-down calculation the rooftop solar pv would be stored in pumped storage, then also a demand peak would move across the nets from HV to MV to LV.

• Resulting from this, should we consider solving the load calculation simultaneously for all voltage levels instead of sequentially?

[AlexanderWirtz]

Does wind offshore stored in batteries create a demand or a supply peak in the real world grids? Especially for the MV net it matters a lot where demand and supply meet. Does it show a demand peak or a supply peak on the MV net?

At the risk of stating the obvious: it depends on where the batteries are located in real world grids. Of course they would have an actual location in the grid, but leaving aside their spatial location, they still have a location at a certain voltage level. The grid level at which the batteries store the wind power is the level at which wind power supply is equivalent to or higher than battery demand. If there are also batteries further down the grid levels, some wind power supply moves there and is stored there.

I realize our calculation does not work that way. Ideally, we would figure out a way to solve the calculation per grid level, but I think this is not easy to do in a way that is not resource intensive. On the other hand, what do I know about that?

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